Does the Baby Jesus ever grow up?

Sometimes kids help us to question things we’ve always accepted. Like the one child who asked his father, “Does the Baby Jesus ever grow up? Seems like he’s the same age every Christmas.” There’s a scene in a recent Will Ferrell movie where he is praying to the baby Jesus. He responds to the criticism of his family by saying, that he likes the Christmas version of Jesus the best because he’s cute and cuddly but still omnipotent. Some are offended by the scene in the movie while I think we should pay attention to what it reveals about us.

Ferrell’s words resonate a little bit with our wandering, independent hearts because we like the Christmas version of Jesus the best too. You see, if Jesus never grows up, He never makes any real demands on our lives. The baby needs us, we don’t really need the baby. But Christmas is more than cuddly omnipotence and Jesus does grow up to fulfill the offices of our Prophet, Priest and King. But perhaps the most important thing about the Christmas Story is not that Jesus is/was a baby but that in the Incarnation, God lowered Himself to the lowest levels of humanity to communicate to us about Himself using baby talk so we could understand.

Just for fun, here’s a link to a clean, edited version of the above referenced scene in the Will Ferrell movie, Talladega Nights: